


Self-expression

by MxGeek



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Couffaine Siblings, Exactly 2000 words wow, Juleka ships it, Lowkey Julerose, Luka is trying ok, Lukanette, Post-Frozer, Some nice talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22159591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MxGeek/pseuds/MxGeek
Summary: Juleka didn't quite agree to her brother going to the ice-rink with Marinette, but it should be fun, right? He says it was fun. But there's something off about the way Luka is acting once he comes back home...Now, neither of them are talkers. But they need to talk.“I’m fine”. Luka thought that was a white lie, because it harmed no one. Juleka highly disagreed.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Self-expression

**Author's Note:**

> 'Tis a simple story, just to get back to my writing habits.  
> The way Luka smiles when Marinette goes talk to Adrien by the end of Frozer always breaks my heart and I want to talk about it. Also, I need more Couffaine Siblings action.
> 
> I do hope you enjoy! ^^

The Couffaines had a tendency to not express themselves very well.

Juleka was used to being misinterpreted in her mumbles and deadpan expressions. Even if it was quite inconvenient at times, she learned to live with it. After all, she was an observer, not a talker.

Her mother, on the other hand, was certainly a talker. She oftentimes talked before thinking and did little to no weighting of her actions. It wasn’t to say that Anarka wasn’t a wise woman, but her children knew not to take everything she said to heart. After all, words said without thinking expressed just as much as no words at all.

Luka, too, wasn’t a talker. He was decidedly an observer, yes, but he was also a musician. All of them were musicians. But Luka had it in him to use music as his direct translator for anything he wished to express, be it his own feelings or, more often than not, others’.

“Music is often simpler than words”, he usually said. So Juleka dearly wished he would just drop the plate he had been pretending to wash for the past eight minutes and go play his guitar; because he’d been humming off-tune since he got back, and she just _knew_ something was wrong.

They would have to go a little more complicated than music, then.

‘So…’ she murmured without taking her eyes off her tea mug ‘how did it go?’

‘It went pretty well’, said Luka simply ‘It was fun.’

‘I heard there was an akuma attack there.’

‘Mm’ he rinsed his plate for what was probably the fourth time already ‘Ladybug took care of it pretty quick. No one got hurt.’

‘Uh-huh’ Juleka took a sip of tea and eyed her brother as he went back to humming that half-hearted melody.

Earlier that day, Luka said he was leaving to hang out with Marinette at the ice-rink, and his sister had half a mind to call the girl in pigtails and give her a good rant about how inviting someone else to the ice-rink was a clearly stupid move. But then again, Juleka was not a talker. So she stood still. The thought that Luka could wingman her friend while ice-skating was a funny one; the thought that he could at least keep her mind off of Adrien for a bit while Kagami the Ice Queen somehow conquered the blond was hopeful, even if slightly unrealistic.

In any way, Juleka expected her brother to come back with some awkward Marinette stories to laugh about or maybe with the news that Marinette had finally murdered Kagami and married Adrien. Ok, maybe not that much. But at the very least, she expected Luka to come home with a merrier sounding tune.

The purple-haired goth watched as the blue-haired one finally put down his perfectly cleaned plate. He took a deep breath before he spoke again, and it sounded as if he was trying hard not to sigh.

‘Marinette is in love with Adrien, isn’t she?’ he didn’t face Juleka as he asked.

‘Uh, yeah’ she answered raising an eyebrow ‘She’s crazy for him.’

‘Figured as much’ Luka said in a strangely toneless voice and went back to rewashing his plate.

Juleka frowned at her brother. ‘Why do you ask?’

She normally wouldn’t go about that subject so bluntly, but something was definitely wrong, and she felt like they would have to go a little deeper in words for her to find out what it was. Nevertheless, she got up and went for her guitar sitting on the couch, just to be sure.

‘I don’t know. She just really seemed to appreciate being there with him. Or looking at him, for that matter’ Luka chuckled lightly.

‘And…?’ Juleka encouraged.

He put the dish down again. ‘And I guess she wanted to talk to him after we left the rink. She looked really…’ his hands went instinctively to a guitar that wasn’t there, and he seemed to struggle with his words for a moment. ‘ _Happy_. She looked happy when looking at him, and also really nervous. And kind of melancholic, if that makes any sense; as if she was missing something, you know?’

‘That’s Marinette, alright’ Juleka mumbled with a short smile. ‘And then…?’

‘And then I told her to go talk to him.’

Despite him still not facing her, something in Luka’s demeanour told his sister they were getting to the point. ‘So…?’

‘So…’ once again Luka searched for an invisible instrument to translate the feeling he couldn’t convey. That was the closest he ever got to fidgeting.

Juleka went ahead and played a few chords to try and help him out. Granted, she wasn’t as good at reading feelings like they were sheet music as he was. But it still seemed to have some effect, as Luka finally turned around.

He had a soft smile on.

‘So I let her go.’

Once when they were kids, Luka fell from a tree in the park and broke his arm. Of course he cried, for no kid in his right mind would refrain from immediately crying upon breaking an arm. But as soon as he saw a worried little Juleka desperately sobbing after him as if she was the one in pain, he stopped. In his mother’s arms, he stopped crying and gave her a soft, tranquilizing smile, reassuring her that it was fine, that there was nothing to worry about…

The smile he had on right now was way too reminiscent of the one he had back then.

“I’m fine”. Luka thought that was a white lie, because it harmed no one. Juleka highly disagreed.

‘Why does it upset you?’ she asked, still strumming her guitar.

‘It doesn’t’ he said simply.

Anyone else would have stopped the conversation there, because the boy genuinely didn’t _seem_ bothered. But Juleka knew better than to fall for that.

‘Yeah it does’ she shot back, unimpressed.

He shrugged, much to her frustration.

The Couffaines had a tendency to not express themselves very well.

Juleka found herself lost under the more glooming and suspicious sound her fingers produced. It clearly wasn’t Luka’s arm that was broken; nor did he seem to be physically injured in any way. She rewound their conversation in her head in search for an answer, and her melody started to accompany her process of thought.

“It went pretty well. It was fun.” So it’s not like Marinette didn’t show up or just ignored him all day. I wasn’t like her to do so anyway, even if she could get caught up with staring at Adrien sometimes.

“Marinette is in love with Adrien, isn’t she?” Of course she was, everybody knew that. Well, everybody but Adrien. But despite his cluelessness, Marinette was head over heels for him, and that’s just what it was. Why should that matter for Luka?

“She looked happy when looking at him”. Something in his face lit up when he said those words, as if nothing in the entire world would have made him more contented than putting a smile on Marinette’s face.

“Melancholic”, he said “as if she was missing something”. It was then that that cheerfulness disappeared as smoothly as it appeared; somehow as if the boy was actually talking about himself in that statement. For a moment it seemed as nothing could make him more distressed than having Marinette sad.

It was on the tip of her tongue, she knew it…!

Luka was now done with the plate, and started to entertain himself with washing a perfectly clean fork, again lost in his odd little tune. It reminded Juleka of something. Or rather, of _someone_ …

She eyed her brother once again. He seemed relaxed, not a concern in the world. Those misty eyes could have been read as dreamy by someone who didn’t know him well. And that _smile_ was still there, hanging on his face as if he’d forgotten to turn it off. Lost in the thoughts he tried to console himself with, that was the face of a boy who lost something he held dear…

_“So I let her go.”_

Juleka’s melody came to a halt.

Oh.

_Oh…_

‘You like her’ she mumbled slowly.

‘What do you mean?’ her stupid blue-haired love-struck brother had the audacity to ask, trying not to appear ever so obvious.

‘You _like_ Marinette!’ she put an emphasis in the word _like_ that made it impossible to not understand what she meant.

How could she have been so blind?! The way he asked about her after the Music Festival, the way he looked at her whenever she was on board, the way he lit up whenever she talked to him, the way he talked about her whenever he had the chance… heck, the way he started _playing_ after they met! And he gave her his favourite Jagged Stone pick, for crying out loud! It was all done so casually, Juleka didn’t even notice that was the exact same way she acted towards Rose. She felt stupid.

Luka wasn’t one to fall in love easily. But if there was something in Marinette that made him fall for her – and Juleka herself could name quite a few good traits about their Everyday Ladybug –, the youngest Couffaine was willing to believe her brother was the happiest person on Earth for going out with the girl in pigtails.

_“And then I told her to go talk to him.”_

_…Oh God, she let Luka wingman his crush…_

To her surprise – or maybe not so much –, the boy was still smiling, this time more truthfully, as if caught in the middle of a pleasant thought.

‘What can I say? She’s an extraordinary girl’ he commented.

‘And you didn’t say anything?’ Juleka questioned almost in disbelief.

‘Why would I?’

‘And you just let her go after Adrien without a word!’ she wasn’t sure if she was angry at him, at Marinette, at Adrien or at herself. Probably all of the above. ‘You _encouraged_ her!’

‘She likes him. If he makes her happy, I don’t see why I should ever get in their way.’

Her brother was literally the most amazing person in the entire world. The aura of sheer _joy_ he had on him whenever he talked about Marinette was enough to brighten the gloomiest of days. There was something right there between them, maybe an exchanged look, maybe a single smile, _something_ that made Juleka doubt everything she thought she knew. And she never really meant to pry on her friend’s love life, but right now, she felt the need to commit herself to never again participate on the active plots against what was probably Marinette’s last drop of common sense. “Sorry, Adrien” didn’t feel quite right, but neither did “you’re welcome, Adrien”.

Luka went to the counter his sister left her empty mug on and, for a solid minute, she saw him mentally debating his will to spend another ten minutes washing said mug. He decided against it and came to sit with her on the couch instead.

‘I kind of just wanna see her happy, you know?’ he said, probably reading questions on Juleka’s mostly expressionless face ‘If it means letting her go, then I’ll do it. If it means being by her side when she needs it, like today, then I will be. And that’s just it’

The boy then reached for his own guitar. The tune he hummed earlier found its way into his strings, sounding somewhat more melodic than before. Juleka had half a mind to play along, but she found herself silently admiring the music. It reminded her of Marinette, now that she thought about it.

There were days when looking at Rose gave her stomach butterflies that could take down Hawkmoth’s akumas any day. She now wondered if Luka ever felt the same about Marinette.

Juleka was a Couffaine. And as such, she had a tendency to not express herself very well.

But _oh boy_ , would she cheer loudly if that ship sailed…

**Author's Note:**

> The thing about writing an entire work in English when English is not your first language is that you proof-read it 7.000 and still get paranoid something's wrong. Don't hesitate to tell me if you find any mistakes!
> 
> Thanks for reading! ^^


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